Gill,
I am watching a series called "In Treatment" which seems to me, as somebody who has worked around therapists all his career, and even seen a few in my time, to be a very, VERY accurate portrayal of the possible perils and benefits of psychotherapy. The show has made me aware that the working model of good human functioning to a psycho therapist goes something like this: I want a hot fudge Sundae I go to the ice cream store, I order ice cream, I order fudge, I order whipped cream, and I order a maraschino cherry. I eat it. I am happy. What if I don't have money for a hot fudge sundae. Well, I go to the bank, or I borrow the money, or I get a job, etc. In other words, I organize my sub-goals, under some superordinate goal, like wanting a hot fudge sundae. And so forth. Not functioning in accordance with that model is called psych-pathology. In other words, people should know what will please them, and if they don't, they should figure that out, and then they should how to find that thing, and if they don't, they should problem-solve until they do, and then they should get what they want and then they should be happy. If none of this is happening for them, then they need help, according to the model. I won't consider now whether this model has anything to do with how human beings ARE. Now that I write it out it seems a bit absurd. For one thing, as an evolutionary psychologist, I can't quite figure out what the function of "happiness" might be. However, what I will say is that, granting the model, people who, in various ways, keep defeating themselves are probably embedded in a larger pattern which satisfies some goal they are not fully aware of. Or they are aware of the goal of that pattern, but not aware that it conflicts with the embedding goal-pattern. So, they somehow never get the hotfudge sundae, and they don't know WHY? Psycho therapy is supposed to line up their goal structures so they get some of what they want. A lot of public dumb stuff seems to be the result of projecting family relations onto situations that bear no relation to that situation. Road rage is probably an example of a kind of behavior borrowed from one context where it works in some way and applied to another where it just gets you killed. Nick From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gillian Densmore Sent: Friday, May 18, 2012 7:12 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Unsolved Problems in Psychology I might add to it underpaying and overworking. On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 7:10 PM, Gillian Densmore <gil.densm...@gmail.com> wrote: I might be seeing where this could be going but the general technical term Dumb Stuff might be defiend as one or of the following: Bad manered drivers, procstratinating on tasks,not willing to properly fund education and science-just as examples. On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 6:54 PM, Nicholas Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: Well, in my psychology, the answer to such a question takes the form of, "what is the larger pattern of which my dumb stuff is a part?" N From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gillian Densmore Sent: Friday, May 18, 2012 6:09 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Unsolved Problems in Psychology Oh oh I have a potentialy unsolvable problem: how come people (me included) constantly do dumb stuff? On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 4:13 PM, Bruce Sherwood <bruce.sherw...@gmail.com> wrote: Newton famously said about action at a distance, "I frame no hypotheses". I take this to mean something like the following: "I completely agree with you that I haven't explained gravity. Rather I've shown that observations are consistent with the radical notion that all matter attracts all other matter, here and in the heavens, made quantitative by a one-over-r-squared force 'law'. On this basis I have shown that the orbits of the planets and the behavior of the tides and the fall of an apple, previously seen as completely different phenomena, are 'explainable' within one single framework. I propose that we provisionally abandon the search for an 'explanation' of gravity, which looks fruitless for now, and instead concentrate on working out the consequences of the new framework. Let's leave it as a task for future scientists to try to understand at a deeper level than 'action-at-a-distance' what the real character of gravity is. There has been altogether too much speculation, such as maybe angels push the planets around. Let's get on with studying what we can." I think Newton doesn't get nearly enough credit for this radical standpoint, which made it possible to go forward. And of course we know that eventually Einstein found a deep 'explanation' for gravity in terms of the effects that matter has on space itself. There are hints in the current string theory community of even deeper insights into the nature of gravity. Bruce On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 1:38 PM, Russ Abbott <russ.abb...@gmail.com> wrote: > John, I like your gravity question. If this were Google+, I'd click its +1 > button. My wife, who studies these things, says that one of the > fiercest contemporary criticisms of Newton's theories was that they depended > on a mysterious (magical?) action at a distance. > > -- Russ Abbott ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
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